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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903673">Cheirophilia</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazandorable/pseuds/Aza'>Aza (sazandorable)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Domestic, Hands/Fingers/Arms Fetish, M/M, RQG177 Last Words II spoilers, Season 4 Spoilers, The Inherent Romanticism Of Murder Oaths, general morbidity, including suicide ideation CW, nothing bad actually happens but check the notes for CWs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:02:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazandorable/pseuds/Aza</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Zolf Smith has big hands.</p><p>Oscar has many thoughts about what those hands could do, not all of them fun, but all of them comforting.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>101</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cheirophilia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Content warnings:</b> nothing much actually happens beyond canon, but Wilde is quite the casual asshat and there's some idle objectification and sexual fantasies of unaware party, including mild allusions to BDSM, choking kink (but morbid), a scene about cooking meat and sexual consumption metaphors, and occasional nudity (sexual and non-sexual). References to sex, but no actual sex or kissing between Zolf and Oscar. Also a little violence and injuries+medical treatment, and a <i>LOT</i> of thinking about death, references to death, on-screen death, canon death, daydreaming about murder, suicide ideation, etc. etc.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Zolf Smith has big hands.</p><p>Oscar noticed them first in Paris. In London, there was another, larger man in the room, with larger hands and more amenability to do perfectly abominable things to Oscar with them. The irascible dwarf was amusing enough to tease, but that was about it, at the time. In Paris, Bertie was very much not a repeat option and Oscar took another look around, and thought, huh, he wouldn’t mind letting this one lay those big ol’ rough mitts on him, if Mister Smith could be persuaded to be just slightly less murderous. Only for a little death.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Those elements did, technically, take place a few months later, only arranged in the most unpleasant combination possible. With the anti-magic anklets, Oscar is helpless beyond even the capacity to be healed, and on that day Zolf’s hand pressed hard on his cheek to stop the hemorrhage naturally. Oscar’s heart was a panicked hunted animal and it felt like it was beating right against Zolf’s palm. In the dazed stupidity of hypovolemic shock, Oscar mumbled: “That’s not how I wanted you to see me naked, Mister Smith.”</p><p>“Remind me to smack you upside the head for that later,” Zolf retorted calmly, without losing a beat, without wavering.</p><p>His thick fingers were splayed over Oscar’s eyes, and Oscar stared through them, distantly, his vision fuzzy, at the beloved naked body, now a corpse, on the floor. Both of Zolf’s hands were covered in blood, and they were steady the whole time, as he pressed on Oscar’s wound, as he wrapped Oscar up in the thoroughly ruined sheets to keep him warm. Later, too, when he sewed Oscar’s face back shut, and later when they spent a week in quarantine in a Harlequin cell and he changed the bandages every day and he helped Oscar to eat and drink through the first few days of facial mobility loss.</p><p>They both saw a lot of each other naked, in that time, and then as now it was nothing but tiring and depressing. Instead, it was when Zolf would take the bandages off and look intently at Oscar’s disfigurement, into his open flesh, poke gently at it, cleaning, monitoring, caring for it — that was when the proximity would feel intimate. Too much so, too close, unbearable, and Oscar would avert his gaze and keep his focus on Zolf’s strong, stable hands on his face.</p><p>Zolf never did give him that smack upside the head.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>These days, Oscar deals exclusively in death literal, and Zolf’s hands are more often busy with keeping life going. Oscar continues to send good people out to risk their lives again and again and again and Zolf continues to go without a word of protest, but the rest of the time, while Oscar writes and researches and manages and networks and cuts contact and crosses off names and dead-end theories, Zolf’s occupations are surprisingly menial. A lot of it seems to be habits ingrained from the army and ship life, Oscar assumes, as the good ex-Commander Barnes has the same tendency to keep everything tightly and neatly packed away, folds crisp, life portable. Zolf sweeps the woven rush mats and mops the wooden walkways, cleans and sharpens weapons and kitchen knives, scrubs dirty dishes and bloodstains out of clothes. Mends old socks and ripped trousers, fixes a wobbling table and a squeaking sliding door, with no-nonsense efficiency, though he’s no tradesman; he even, one day, takes a trip up on the roof with Carter to patch up a leak. And, Oscar realises only after a good few weeks of life at the inn, he cooks.</p><p>For some reason, Oscar thinks back about his injury and the aftermath every time he sees Zolf cooking. It’s an unsavoury association, yet, watching Zolf’s sure hands chop up a slab of beef meat and grab the morsels, fat and blood dripping over his fingers, before chucking them into the singing hot frying pan, Oscar cannot help but run his own fingertips along the rough scar tissue on his cheek.</p><p>Sure, he would not mind sucking slick from those thick digits, let them manipulate the meat and flesh of him, let Zolf take him into his mouth and absorb him. Theoretically. But that’s just idle fancy, fantasies only set in a less treacherous world, with less of a proof carved into his face that such relations are a dangerously stupid idea now. (And, if he is honest, a terrifying one.) It’s nothing serious, nothing significant. There’s no soil in this world for that seed to take root.</p><p>The more insistent, more worrying thought that nags around Oscar’s brain while he watches Zolf carve and mince dead flesh and make something delicious out of it, is that when he’s going to die eventually, it would be nice if he, too, got to die by those hands.</p><p>Zolf would do it, he thinks, without hesitation. His hands would not shake. They would pry the life out of Oscar and, maybe, close his eyelids and lay his body out, to rest.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Sure,” Zolf says, arms deep into a bucket of laundry. The sleeves of his robes are pulled up past his elbows, tied together in his back like the people do here, and he’s got soap foam up his entire forearms, caught in wiry grey-white hair. “Assumed that was kind of an implicit understanding already, to be honest.”</p><p>“I think it might be worth expliciting,” Oscar states, calmly, airily.</p><p>Sitting on the porch, the maddening relentless white noise of the rain is almost loud enough to drown out their voices. They certainly can’t hear anything from Barnes and Carter, in the screened-off pool just a few yards away, but then again quietness is the norm after a week in forced proximity. It’s all very standard; they only just came out of quarantine and immediately beelined for the bath, and Zolf grabbed their week-old, battle-stained clothes to finally wash them.</p><p>Oscar keeps expecting Zolf to complain about his lack of helping with any of the housekeeping, but it never happens. Zolf continues stirring and scrubbing the fabrics in the wooden basin, and Oscar continues idly watching.</p><p>“If it seems reasonable to you, we’ll talk it out with the whole team, then,” he adds, gesturing in the general direction of the baths. “Making it an assigned task with nominal responsibility makes it more likely that it will be done, without everyone expecting someone else will handle the dirty work.”</p><p>“I’ll do it,” Zolf says, immediately, quiet but clear through the thrum of the rain. He pulls out Barnes’ grime-splattered shirt and wrings it out, his forearms twisting with it, muscles tensing. “If it’s necessary. Don’t worry that I won’t be able to do it — I will.”</p><p>Oscar watches the dark red water trinkle through his fingers, cascades of thinned old blood. “I know.”</p><p>Zolf smiles, wry, and Oscar imagines those large hands implacably squeezing the air out of his windpipes, and finds himself breathing more freely.</p><p>It makes some measure of sense. It is a weight off his mind. Barnes and Carter seem to take it the same offhanded way and the conversation doesn’t last five minutes, general agreement quickly reached that Barnes could deal with Zolf and Carter, regrettably, can absolutely handle Barnes. After months of working and living together in constant proximity, the four of them have reached an odd equilibrium of bluntly stating what needs to be stated — such as the technicalities of how to handle infection and defection — with no resentment, and tactfully leaving unsaid what doesn’t — such as the obvious fact that Oscar would not be able to take any of them in a fight.</p><p>Oscar has long accepted the slimness of his chance of surviving any of them being compromised. He’s been more worried about the possibility of getting turned himself, the damage he is capable of wreaking through his haphazard network, in bleak contrast to his current uselessness on this side of things. So it’s a relief, to know there is a protocol in place for that, it makes sense for that grim agreement to bring him peace of mind.</p><p>But there’s definitely more to it than just strategic forethought and trust in a reliable teammate.</p><p>It’s a comfort; he thinks about it, after, not every night but when he’s having trouble sleeping. (Granted, that’s almost the same.) He lays a hand on his own throat and silently revels in the weight of it, going limp and heavy on his powerless windpipes. That’s probably not how Zolf would go about killing him when the time comes, but a man can dream.</p><p>He is tired, he is desperate, he is scared, but at least, when worst comes to worst, Zolf will kill him.</p><p>It helps, a little.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Oscar makes a joke in Hiroshima.</p><p>Zolf doesn’t find it very funny, and the reasons for that are manyfold: it has been over a year since Oscar made a joke, he is out of practice; the tense relationship that has been growing like creeping vine between them despite their obstinate attempts at stunting it is not a good source of laughing matter; he did not intend it as a joke; he forced himself to come up with that comment as a less inappropriate alternative to his actual first thought on the topic of Zolf and knots.</p><p>Loathe as Oscar is to use commonality as defence, sailors <em>are</em> a popular fetish (Azu would back him up on this, judging by the flusters she has tried and failed to hide in reaction to both Barnes and the female crew member Zolf hired for Captain Earhart’s flying ship), and he’s been living with actual shackle restraints for the past, what, year and a half, more than that. There is nothing surprising about the little fantasies he lets himself entertain while watching Zolf’s hands around the boat, manipulating rope, pulling, winding, tying complicated knots in one smooth motion. Gesturing sharp orders. Holding the wheel steadfast, teaching Oscar controls. Grabbing Oscar’s lapels and tugging him down. Gathering and carrying materials at Oscar’s directions, nailing down furniture, opening a bottle of one of the good beers with him over the half-finished makeshift bar in the early evening.</p><p>Their knuckles touch when they clink glasses and droplets of foamy golden liquid trickle over Zolf’s fingers and Oscar knows what the drink tastes like, but it would taste different licked from Zolf’s skin, wouldn’t it?</p><p>It’s not about the beer. It’s not even about the saucy fantasies, either. Not really. Not just that.</p><p>The thing is — it wasn’t really a joke because Oscar truly can’t find it in him to see the appeal of marriage, when Zolf has already agreed to tie himself to him with a much grander, much more significant promise. The commitment, the romance of it all, it just pales in comparison.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Oscar doesn’t really remember any of that, when he’s dead. He isn’t thinking of Zolf’s hand mending his cheek — he isn’t quite managing to think at all, he doesn’t have the scar and doesn’t even remember that he’s supposed to. He has no memories of Zolf making himself second in-charge of the inn, of the ship, of the team, providing warm meals and clean clothes and quiet mulish reliability.</p><p>He has an awareness of Zolf’s strong bare forearms and of what they can do, though. What they promised to do. What they can mean, for him. When Zolf sits down next to him and mutters: “Hey,” Oscar thinks, crystal-clear in his empty fuzzy mind: <em>there he is, there’s Zolf come to kill me. As promised.</em></p><p>So it’s almost a betrayal, what Zolf says instead. How much his voice shakes. Oscar looks at his hands, those large, dependable, comfortingly sure hands, fidgeting and jittering in Zolf’s lap, and it’s a punch, a let-down, a drop.</p><p>Oscar has only the barest handle on his own history and can’t keep hold on a thought for more than five seconds, only really recognises Zolf as a concept with no solid grasp of a timeline or any precise events, but at this point he thinks: <em>So what, even to kill me you won’t put your hands on me? Even to let me finally rest, you’re not going to touch me?</em></p><p>He doesn’t flirt, here. It’s not that. He doesn’t get distracted by Zolf’s anatomy, doesn’t formulate raunchy scenarios and kinky daydreams, he’s just. Grasping. Reaching. Fumbling, trying to get a handle, looking for purchase, for a grip to hang on to. For support. What he wants is something, someone, solid, to rely on, and if he couldn’t — can’t — get it in life then he hoped, he thought, he <em>asked</em> Zolf to provide it to him in death at least. Zolf promised.</p><p>Please. He’s so tired. Please, Zolf, please, why won’t Zolf give him that.</p><p>“Because <em>I</em> need you,” Zolf chokes out, finally, finally, and it’s not what Oscar asked for, but it could be. It can be. If Zolf is willing to step out and say it, maybe he’s willing to provide what Oscar needs in exchange, maybe he’s willing to use those hands to build something <em>with</em> Oscar.</p><p>Zolf <em>reaches out</em>, <em>finally</em>, and grabs Oscar by the lapels, and Oscar, dead, currently mostly aware that he is dead, finds himself breathing again. That, again, that feeling, he remembers that, for about five seconds before it flits away: weight off his chest, because Zolf is taking it, shouldering it. A promise. That’s what it’s been about, not Zolf’s hands, but their capacity to take, to carry, to do some work too. To support, to be depended and relied on. To hold, maybe.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Before he has fully woken up Oscar is already reaching out, blindly, unconsciously. His arm bats around weakly for all of perhaps a second or two before it is caught, and he grasps, and Zolf’s big strong hands cup around his hand and hold it warm and steady and Zolf says, clear and firm, “It’s okay, you’re okay, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”</p><p>Half-awake, half-alive, mumbling half-minded protests, Oscar relaxes, and is breathing again, easily.</p>
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